Ma Fleur
by Trivial Pursuit
Summary: Agnes Towler to Henri Leclair, in flowers.
1. Rose

**Author's Note: Originally posted on AO3.**

* * *

Red Rose - True love

* * *

He asks the accessory assistants for the final perfect touch to his last window mostly out of a combination of frustration and curiosity; frustration at his lack of ideas and curiosity to how they'll react to the request. The other two girls and Miss Mardle don't surprise him at all really, but she does. She steps forward and asks a question and he sees her eyes light up and the cogs whirr to life inside her head. But then Miss Mardle sends her back to work and the little spark he saw dies. He turns away, in search of something, but she surprises him again. She brings forward a red rose and all he can think of is how pretty she would look in a rose-coloured dress.

But she holds the rose out to him and explains why he should use this particular flower. Her arguments are well-reasoned and her sense of chic is impeccable. She stutters when she comes to the bit about love and it makes him a little sad, to see someone so full of joie de vivre mumble about love as if it is a privilege for the upper class, like champagne and caviar.

He tells her he'll think about it and she smiles brightly and he knows then that he'll use the rose, if only to keep that wonderful light in her eyes.

(Miss Mardle calls and the light is gone.)


	2. Lavender

Lavender - Devotion and distrust.

* * *

She's away from work for several days, which is odd because she comes to work every day ten minutes early and stays ten minutes late every day. He sees her watching carefully as each person passes through her department, waiting for them to even seem to need something. So he knows there's something wrong when she doesn't show up for work for four days.

He does not see, but rather hear of the unpleasant bruise she sports across her cheekbone and it fills him with a incomprehensible rage to some unknown party who has broken her. The other two accessory assistants - he can never remember their names - laugh and snicker about it, making snide remarks at her expense.

When he does see her she is not strong or happy, she does not have the bearing of her colleagues and peers, indeed he rather thinks she resembles Miss Bunting, someone old who has been worn down by life to the utmost. The mark is yellowing at the edges but is still strongly purple in the middle, barely disguised by the now-faded powder. And yet, despite all this she is beautiful.

When he comes up to her she looks apprehensive and opens her mouth with what he can tell is some half-hearted excuse formed on her lips, so he does not ask about it, instead he queries her on something else entirely.

She stares at the perfumes in wonder, rather like a child in front of la Tour Eiffel, amazed, and he thinks that it is all she sees, she does not see the incredible feats of engineering it took to achieve such great heights. But, as always, she surprises him, remarking on the seeming untouchability of the displays, yet he does not see her eyes wander to a particular scent and he wonders if she wears any at all. He asks, and she blushes but nods.

Lavender, she says, and he just has to know, because it it so simple, so perfect, yet it brings her together with a final flourish, then someone interrupts and the moment is broken, she walks away and life goes on.

(Henri can't decide whether he hates the colour purple or not.)


	3. Lily-of-the-Valley

Lily-of-the-Valley - Sweetness, Humility, Returning Happiness, Trustworthiness.

* * *

She spins around in that hat, smiling at this little piece of covert joy when he walks in. He doesn't say anything because he has never seen her so perfectly unguarded before; her walls are down, but she sees him and the walls go up again. He tells her she's wasted among the boxes, boxes that cannot appreciate her perfectly understated elegance.

He leads her to his workshop and she looks around the same way she looked at the perfume counter (He tells her how much he thinks of her but he doesn't think she hears, she's too entranced by everything else.).

She talks about lily-of-the-valley and he talks about love (Sometimes, he's sure they're talking about the same thing). He loves it when she tells him about the flowers because even though she's not mysterious she is a mystery; if you ask a question she'll answer it, if elusively, but she never volunteers information about herself.

Ellen Love might be the face of Selfridge's, but Agnes Towler is the heart, soul, and spirit.


	4. Roses, Once More

**Author's Note: Did anyone see how pissed off Henri looked after Harry didn't remember that Agnes had left? My inner shipper had to take some figurative Xanax to calm down after that.**

* * *

Pink Rose - Grace, gratitude, desire, passion, joy of life, youth, energy.

* * *

He asks her about ribbon because he cannot stand to see her with that boy, so he asks about ribbon and smiles at her answer because she's so utterly correct.

He sweeps her off to fashion, much to the consternation of Miss Mardle and the boy but he gets to watch her exclaim and innovate all the time.

When that filthy drunken man comes along, the man who is, without a doubt, the one who has made her so aged so fast he longs to be the one to come to her rescue, to punish the filth for beating something so beautiful into the ground, but the boy gets to the man who claims to be her father first (He cannot believe that that man was involved in creating something so beautiful such as she.).

She leaves and doesn't come back and he finds himself wandering over to what used to be her counter and instead finding it staffed by that rather vulgar girl whose name he can never remember (He's a bit worried she thinks he fancies her.).

He almost screams when Harry doesn't realise that she's gone. Doesn't he feel her absence? Doesn't he see how obviously listless the store is without her rare smiles?

It's not the same.


	5. Ivy

Ivy - Fidelity

* * *

He asks her about ribbon because he cannot stand to see her with that boy, so he asks about ribbon and smiles at her answer because she's so utterly correct.

He sweeps her off to fashion, much to the consternation of Miss Mardle and the boy but he gets to watch her exclaim and innovate all the time.

When that filthy drunken man comes along, the man who is, without a doubt, the one who has made her so aged so fast he longs to be the one to come to her rescue, to punish the filth for beating something so beautiful into the ground, but the boy gets to the man who claims to be her father first (He cannot believe that that man was involved in creating something so beautiful such as she.).

She leaves and doesn't come back and he finds himself wandering over to what used to be her counter and instead finding it staffed by that rather vulgar girl whose name he can never remember (He's a bit worried she thinks he fancies her.).

He almost screams when Harry doesn't realise that she's gone. Doesn't he feel her absence? Doesn't he see how obviously listless the store is without her rare smiles?

It's not the same.


	6. Violet

Violet - Faithfulness (blue), daydreaming (purple), modesty (white).

* * *

He watches her with little Gordon Selfridge and cannot help but admire how easy she is with him, she entertains him with a top and a bit of string grabbed from the children's department on the way to Harry's office. As they walk down the street, she in her scarf and Gordon between them, Henri cannot help but think how much like a family they must look.

He asks her about children and she smiles and talks about how much she has to achieve in her life. A little piece of him sinks when she talks about her 'someone'. In turn he tries to tell her something about herself, something about the way she is in his eyes. Innocent does not even begin to describe the word ingénue, it is so much more then simply that, but he cannot find words in English to bring the meaning across. She smiles and looks a little wistful when talks about her, though he sees the light fly back into her eyes when he asks what to do. She says wait and he knows he'll wait until the end of the world for her.

The night before the march is a flurry, yet he still does their peculiar little dance with her as they fold up the piece of silk.

(He cannot resist adding a little 'voilà' when they finished.)


	7. Poppy

Poppy - Pleasure (red)

* * *

It fills him with a strange sort of joy that she wants to share her news with him, that she has sought him out, above all her colleagues to tell him that she has been moved to the fashion department.

Later, she asks him to help her assemble the mannequins and she smiles and laughs more freely than he's seen her in a while. So he tests the waters, because not having the next step in their relationship would be so much better than loosing whatever this is.

When she kisses him it is soft and surprising, inexperienced but not unpleasant.

When the kiss is over, she pulls back, smiling, yet trembling slightly, as if she's bracing for him to slap or scream at her.

'Was that alright?' The look in her eyes brings forth feelings of rage Henri hadn't previously thought possible, that she could think that she was anything less then completely perfect.

He cannot begin to articulate exactly how far beyond just alright it was, so he says something that he hopes is vaguely clever and kisses her again.


	8. Valerie, An Interlude

Valerie is perhaps rather like an old pair of shoes, not broken or bad-looking, but rather simply comfortable and easy; when he slips his feet into them, Henri knows his boundaries and where he stands.

Valerie Maurel is smart, beautiful, and wonderful, but the moment he lays eyes on Agnes Towler he is no longer sure that he loves her. He thinks, sometimes, that all she can see is the twenty-three-year-old boy standing in the rain with his grandmother's ring after being rejected by the girl he's loved for thirteen years. Sometimes he's sure all he can see is the strong-willed ten-year-old with long red plaits and a dangerous smile he fell in love with.

But, no matter what, even if love has simply faded to lust, Valerie is still safe and Agnes is not.


End file.
